In the manufacture of flat rolled metal, it is the practice to produce the web product with a greater width than is required by the end user and to subsequently slit the web into narrower strips of the desired lateral dimension. According to the practice, the metal web is coiled following rolling, after which, in a separate operation, the coiled web is placed on an uncoiler, unwound, trained through a slitting station and the so-produced strips rewound on the coiler as a number of separate coils.
An improved practice for the production of coiled strip is disclosed in U.S. Patent Application Ser. Nos. 713,599, 818,795 and 819,313, filed Aug. 12, 1976, July 25, 1977 and July 27, 1977 respectively. According to this improved practice, following rolling of the metal, the web is slit along lines parallel to its edge in a manner that produces parting lines containing intermittently spaced tabs that interconnect the adjacent edges of the strips whereby, upon coiling, there results a construct containing a plurality of coils joined by frangible connections. It is contemplated that shipment and the majority of the handling operations will be undertaken with the construct intact. Thereafter, either at the point of use or at an intermediate station, the individual sheet metal strips can be detached from the construct coincident with their unwinding therefrom, as, for example, as they are fed to a press or punch.
It is desirable, in some applications however, as for example, where strip is to be fed simultaneously to a number of separate process machines, to sever the respective strips from the construct as wound coil units in order to facilitate handling of the material. Although apparatus for separting connected rolls of paper or other light sheet materials are well known, such apparatus have serious size and force-producing limitations as to prevent their use on sheet metal product as contemplated in these applications where a coil construct may weigh over ten tons and be upwards of four feet in diameter and where an individual coil in the construct weighs upwards of four hundred pounds per inch of width. In these applications, moreover, forces as great as 10,000 p.s.i. are required to simultaneously fracture all of the tacks connecting an individual coil to the construct.
It is toward the provision of such apparatus, therefore, that the present invention is directed.